In emerging and transitional economies, think tanks increasingly serve as multidisciplinary incubators of “ingenuity”, generating the ideas, evidence, and systems thinking needed to address complex, interlinked development challenges.
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The notion of a think tank, even today, is not readily understood, despite its existence in the socio-political-economic space and ubiquitous allusions in the policy domains. In an emerging economy like India, the use of the term to define a specific type of institution has gained currency only in the last two decades. Certain government-funded institutions (such as those funded by the Indian Council for Social Science Research) assumed the descriptions of research organisations in social sciences, and some of them often found themselves closely linked with the university system. However, the modern-day think tank is not the university, nor does it address academic questions like the traditional research organisations that almost worked as appendages to the university system. The university and traditional research organisations run doctoral programmes, address questions that might be academically important but irrelevant in terms of practical and practicable policy making, often dwell in the confines of four-walled ivory towers, debate among themselves, publish in esoteric journals read only by the academic clan, and justify their existence as “demi-gods” who are above the hoi polloi due to their intellectual pursuit of their self-determined “truths”.
Functioning as brokers of applied policy knowledge, modern-day think tanks need to navigate the intertwined labyrinth of academia, state machinery, opinion makers, and civil society.
In contrast, a modern-day think tank is fast-moving, keeps up with the pace of the dynamic needs of social, economic, political, and ecological systems, and engages beyond the present moment to produce ideas for the future. In that sense, think tanks occupy a unique epistemic space at the confluence of knowledge generation, policy mediation, and ideational innovation. Functioning as brokers of applied policy knowledge, modern-day think tanks need to navigate the intertwined labyrinth of academia, state machinery, opinion makers, and civil society. Therefore, think tanks today serve to bridge the chasm between abstract theoretical frameworks and the granular demands of real-world decision-making by translating interdisciplinary research into actionable insights. In doing so, they emerge not merely as conveyors of information but as curators of relevance, shaping discourses, informing strategic choices, and articulating alternatives that might otherwise remain obscured.
Therefore, a think tank takes up research questions that are grounded in the practical space at the intersection of society, economy and the natural environment – and the problems are complex! Complex problems do not have solutions – if solutions existed, the problems would not have remained complex and would have been expressed in the framework of the ordinate and the abscissa as linear equations with definite (and finite) solutions. However, the complexities of real-life problems do not allow themselves to be presented in well-defined functional forms. Thus, it is important to search for innovative modes of problem resolution rather than definitive solutions that are true across space and time. That is the challenge that the modern-day think tank faces!
Further, the domain of development studies as an independent policy-academic discipline has grown over the past 50 years. From reductionist growth thinking, developmental thinking evolved to include concerns of distributive justice and equity — addressing disparities in healthcare, education, and wealth, among other issues — and eventually found the temporal dimension of its existence with the adoption of the Brundtland Commission’s definition of sustainable development. However, a more holistic delineation of the challenges of development governance emerged with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which replaced the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015. The SDGs, by design, acknowledge the complexity of the development governance paradigm: reconciling the contesting concerns of equity, efficiency, and sustainability, as conceptualised within the framework of Sustainomics by Mohan Munasinghe.
From reductionist growth thinking, developmental thinking evolved to include concerns of distributive justice and equity — addressing disparities in healthcare, education, and wealth, among other issues — and eventually found the temporal dimension of its existence with the adoption of the Brundtland Commission’s definition of sustainable development.
Despite the goals being global, the challenge of meeting the SDGs is starker for the developing world compared to the developed world. The core challenge arises from the deficit of “ideas” or “ingenuity” for financing, policymaking, management, and implementation in meeting the SDGs. This makes the relevance of think tanks even more pronounced for young democracies and transitional economies.
The ingenuity gap, a term coined by political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon, refers to the disparity between the increasing demand for innovative ideas to resolve complex problems and the actual supply of those ideas. Further, Homer-Dixon describes “ingenuity” as a factor of production at the macro-scale, and attributes the developmental gap between the developed and the less developed economies to differences in the production of “ingenuity”. While modern societies face a multitude of interlinked challenges, including environmental issues, economic instability, and social inequalities, the complexity of these challenges is further aggravated by the forces of global warming and climate change. The inextricable interlinkages between these new problems demand new thinking and new ideas that involve both technical and social ingenuity. There are three general characteristics of these problems and the ideas defining them: a) the real-life problem cannot be resolved with present modes of thinking or through a monodisciplinary lens; b) the idea or “ingenuity” needs to be practicable and actionable either in the present or in the future; and c) if the idea is futuristic, it may require delineation of the enabling conditions, and will need constant reiteration in the public domain to maintain relevance.
The ingenuity gap, a term coined by political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon, refers to the disparity between the increasing demand for innovative ideas to resolve complex problems and the actual supply of those ideas.
Multidisciplinary think tanks are in perfect positions to incubate and produce “ingenuity” by approaching the problems of development through a transdisciplinary scaffold. They widen the aperture of the policy space by democratizing access to data, offering counterfactual analyses, and fostering pluralism in public reasoning. It was once thought that economic research organisations might be best suited to address some of the critical developmental problems. However, development governance today is increasingly characterised by complexity, plurality, and the need for co-created solutions. The heterogeneity of development challenges — from climate change and energy transitions to food security and social protection — necessitates multi-stakeholder perspectives and transdisciplinary approaches. More importantly, the problems are interlinked – for instance, geopolitical and geoeconomic shocks affect supply chains, shape the flow of developmental aid, create inflationary pressures, aggravate poverty and hunger, depress purchasing power, and dent human well-being. These complex problems, therefore, need integrated systems thinking transcending disciplinary barriers – an approach that is not possible in the compartmentalised academic departments of universities or specialised economic research institutions. Multidisciplinary think tanks respond to this need by functioning as ideational laboratories. They curate dialogues across silos, unpack systemic interlinkages, and offer policy options rooted in evidence, systems thinking, and institutional realism.
Crucially, the analytical arsenal of such multidisciplinary think tanks extends beyond symptomatic policy fixes. The integrated systems approach allows think tanks to interrogate the "rules of the game" — the incentive structures and power asymmetries that condition developmental outcomes. It is this systems-oriented approach that distinguishes robust policy engagement from ephemeral consultancy.
In doing so, think tanks play a normative role in shaping the contours of development governance discourse. By raising the salience of underrepresented concerns — such as gender equity, climate adaptation finance, the role of ecosystem services in human well-being, or concerns of intergenerational justice — they expand the boundaries of what constitutes “development” and reframe policy priorities accordingly. Through research outputs, public platforms, and consultative workshops, they provide pathways for discursive shifts that often precede institutional change.
Multidisciplinary think tanks are in perfect positions to incubate and produce “ingenuity” by approaching the problems of development through a transdisciplinary scaffold.
In fragile or transitional democracies, where state capacity may be underdeveloped and policy formulation remains opaque or exclusionary, think tanks often serve as substitutes for formalised policy planning bodies. They bring to the table rigour, continuity, and institutional memory, thereby helping anchor policy deliberations in long-term development objectives rather than short-term political expediency. For instance, only a systems approach can inform how a barrage (say, the Farakka Barrage in West Bengal, India) can arrest sediment flow and shrink the delta ecosystem (the Indian Sundarbans delta, in this case). Think tanks foster such evidence-based policymaking by generating credible data, modelling scenarios, and proposing cost-benefit frameworks — tools that can insulate decision-making from populist pressures and arbitrariness.
Furthermore, in the domain of global development cooperation, think tanks contribute significantly to soft power and strategic thought leadership. This is prevalent in global platforms like the G20 and the BRICS, where think tank engagement groups often help shape the development agenda, offering context-specific insights from the Global South. Institutions in the Global South — particularly in countries such as India, Indonesia, Brazil, and South Africa — are now asserting normative agency in global forums by providing alternative frameworks for economic diplomacy, sustainability transitions, and development finance.
It must be kept in mind that a think tank needs to justify its existence in the socio-political-economic-ecological milieu, not by its proximity to power but by the rigour of its work and the ethical compass, it brings to public discourse. Its credibility is contingent upon its capacity to maintain analytical objectivity while engaging with political institutions. Therefore, with the development discourse becoming increasingly contested and multidimensional, the think tanks’ role as interpreters of complexity and incubators of “ingenuity” is slated to become more prominent in the policymaking process, especially in an emerging economy like India.
Nilanjan Ghosh is Vice President - Development Studies at the Observer Research Foundation.
The views expressed above belong to the author(s). ORF research and analyses now available on Telegram! Click here to access our curated content — blogs, longforms and interviews.
Dr Nilanjan Ghosh heads Development Studies at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) and serves as the operational and executive head of ORF’s Kolkata Centre. He ...
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